I remember when AI was supposed to give us our time back.

It was going to write the first drafts, summarise the meetings, generate the code, answer the emails, and free us to do what humans do best..think, create, and maybe even leave work before sunset.

Instead, it seems to have discovered humanity’s greatest hidden talent, filling every minute we save with even more work.

As a product leader in tech, I’ve never spent so much time talking about efficiency while feeling less efficient. Every conversation has “LLM” in the title. Every roadmap has been rewritten. Every strategy meeting ends with three more strategy meetings. We haven’t replaced work, we’ve simply upgraded it to Version 2.0.

Outside my window, the monsoon has been relentless.

The rain has that peculiar way of making you want to be anywhere but where you are. It makes airports seem romantic, mountains feel closer, and every travel reel on Instagram look like a sign from the universe. My passport has been quietly waiting on the shelf, while my calendar continues to remind me that my next destination is the next Teams meeting.

As if the week wasn’t dramatic enough, the stock market decided to audition for a disaster movie. Watching Bank Nifty pull my savings downhill has become a daily exercise in emotional resilience. Financial experts call it volatility. I call it a very expensive personality test.

Then there’s The Housemaid.

It’s been sitting on my desk for over a month. Every morning I confidently tell myself, “Tonight is the night.” Every evening, one last email becomes one last document, becomes one last AI evaluation, becomes bedtime.

Ironically, the only thing in my life that’s been truly patient is the book I haven’t had time to read.

Perhaps that’s adulthood today… We have smarter machines, faster computers, better salaries, more opportunities and every tool imaginable to save us time.

Yet somehow, the rain falls without us watching it.
The markets crash without us understanding them.
Books wait to be opened.
Trips wait to be planned.
And life quietly waits in the spaces between our meetings.

Maybe the biggest irony of the AI era isn’t that machines are becoming more human.

It’s that humans are becoming more like machines. Always optimising, always producing, always connected.

I’m just hoping that one of these days, the smartest thing I do isn’t another prompt.

It’s finally opening that book.

Till later!

Related: AI Anxiety and the Fantasy of Early Retirement